Posts by Another Kansan

This article provides an interesting analysis of the actual regulatory changes proposed by the Department of State. Most of the other things I've seen are more opinion than actual analysis of the proposed text. Worth a close read.

BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR THE LEGISLATION
The United States Secret Service provides protective services to the President, the First Family, the Vice President, former Presidents, visiting heads of state, and others. This protection covers not only the White House and its grounds but also any where a protectee may be temporarily visiting. The Secret Service also provides protection at events designated as a special event of national significance.

Current law prohibits unlawful entries upon any restricted building or ground where the President, Vice President or other protectee is temporarily visiting. However, there is no Federal law that expressly prohibits unlawful entry to the White House and its grounds or the Vice Presidents residence and its grounds. The Secret Service must therefore rely upon a provision in the District of Columbia Code, which addresses only minor misdemeanor infractions, when someone attempts to or successfully trespasses upon the grounds of the White House or Vice Presidents residence or, worse, breaches the White House or Vice Presidents residence itself.

H.R. 347 remedies this problem by specifically including the
White House, the Vice Presidents residence, and their respective grounds in the definition of restricted buildings and grounds for purposes of Section 1752.

The bill also clarifies that the penalties in Section 1752 of title 18 apply to those who knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so. Current law does not include this important element. The bill makes other technical improvements to the existing law. In the 111th Congress, the House approved similar legislation (H.R. 2780) by voice vote on July 27, 2010.

Never forget that Fred Phelps (the leader of the Westboro lunatics) and his family are Democrats. Phelps has run in Democratic Party primaries five times. These included races for governor in 1990, 1994, and 1998, for Senate in the 1992, and Mayor of Topeka in 1993 and 1997. He was a delegate to the 1988 Democrat National Convention. He ran Al Gore’s campaign for president in Eastern Kansas in 1988. He was invited to the 1992 AND 1996 presidential inagural. I don’t know if they ever attended a tea party event or not - they attend a lot of events merely to protest, and it would not be a surprise if they protested at Tea Party events the same way they protest at funerals of deceased servicemen and women.

Brilliant opportunity for the majority who pay taxes to submit their grievances against the failures of the system. Why not join the protest briefly, and drop something in their suggestion box! Some modest suggestions for consideration:

1) Fannie Mae and irresponsible lending to people who can't pay their debts, causing the financial system to collapse;

In the interest of full disclosure, I worked for Mark once upon a time. So the personal endorsement is that he is a good man and deserves the benefit of the doubt. As an attorney, I think I should also say that when the court says he has no choice, then good government requires he sign the thing. It is not healthy to foster a constitutional crisis, and I think Mark deserves credit for standing tall in a very difficult environment. Not many have put their back to the wall in the way Mark has, and staked their reputation in court for a conservative cause, so you all should cut him some slack here. For myself, I am proud to have worked for him, and would be proud to do so again. So Mark, if you’re reading this, lo these many years later, thanks for the opportunities, and keep giving them hell! You have a lot of people who know you well and believe in you.

“The question, therefore, is straightforward: Does the Natural Born Citizen Clause create a federal right the violation of which results in a cognizable [Sec.] 1983 claim? We think not Like the Supremacy Clause and the foreign affairs powers, the Natural Born Citizen Clause does not confer an individual right on citizens or voters. Therefore, Plaintiff cannot state a cognizable [Sec.] 1983 claim.”

So, the Eastern District of PA has just found another part of the Constitution that has no meaning, and cannot be enforced. Great. Wonderful. So glad that the courts are so eager to protect their role as the sole interpreter of the constitution by ignoring it. Yes, the constitution is the highest law of the land. A law so high that none can claim it in their defense...

How can it be that the plain words of the constitutional requirements for anyone seeking the presidency cannot be enforced, because of a lack of constitutional standing on the part of the governed? It turns everything upside down!

The lead for the US Government on technical analysis of voting machines is the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). They have a very informative website that should help you in your debate. http://vote.nist.gov/

56 F.3d 791 ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW (ACORN), et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James R. EDGAR, in his official capacity as Governor of the State of Illinois, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Someone I know did some looking into Obamas role with ACORN, and suggested the following:

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One of the few cases where Obama was an attorney of record during his community organizer days was suing Citibank for its failure to issue more subprime loans. This influential case filed in 1994, Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, was straight out of the ACORN playbook, and indeed Obamas attack was just one in an ongoing assault against Citi by ACORN and its sympathizers. Evidence of the ACORN assault include the 1992 occupation of Citi headquarters in New York. (AP Online, July 14, 1992) Citi became Obamas target in the July, 1994 lawsuit, which surely played a role in a Sept. 20, 2004 press release, Citigroup and ACORN Expand Access to Financial Services in Communities Around the Country. The release trumpeted, With this agreement, ACORN will be able to expand our mission of strengthening commmunities by helping low- and moderate-income families become homeowners. In a related development, the Chicago Tribune from Sept. 11, 1994 declared ACORN has enhanced its financial power through a pilot program with the Federal National Morgage Corp., called Fannie Mae. The program links investors with ACORN to make mortgage money available to needy buyers. Worthy polices, to be sure, but the sloppy implementation forced by Obama and his fellow travelers directly lead to the current financial crisis. According to the WSJ, the subprime driven takeover of Fan and Fred, could cost taxpayers $500B. Citi has already needed to raise $30B in new capital as a result of the subprime crisis. The total costs to the US economy of Obamas signature economic plan are catastrophically high.

Although a junior lawyer on the team, Obamas role in orchestrating the subprime crisis cannot be said to be just a hired gun, the mercenary attorney looking for the big class action settlement. Obama has been affiliated in one form or another with ACORN for 20 years - since before he went to law school, and has their endorsement in this election. After graduation, he came back to Chicago, and went to work advancing ACORNs agenda through the courts. Obamas record in Westlaw is almost certainly incomplete, as it will only capture cases in which an opinion is given. This will exclude, for example, most cases that settle unless there is some intervening decision by the court captured by the court reporters. Westlaw captures six cases where Obama was an attorney of record. In two of them, ACORN was his client. In Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank, clearly inspired by ACORN but financed by a $950,000 attorneys fee, Barack Obama shows himself to be an intellectual author and a direct cause of market crisis of 2007-2008.

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Ive not had the time to independently run down all the facts and citations suggested here, but it is an interesting line of questioning that deserves some thought.

Given Obamas recent statements in favor of reforming the mortgage industry, it is also useful to compare it to his legislative proposal last year. From thomas.loc.gov, consider S. 1222, the Stop Fraud Act, introduced 4/25/2007. The Stop Fraud Act would have subjected the Federal National Mortgage Association, the Government National Mortgage Association, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, mortgage appraisers, real estate accountants, real estate attorneys, real estate brokers, mortgage underwriters, mortgage processors, mortgage settlement and title companies, mortgage brokers, mortgage loan originators, and any other mortgage professional engaged in the mortgage industry to novel new reporting requirements, This reporting would be useful in the new authority given exclusively to people with subprime mortgages, who could use as an affirmative defense against foreclosure fraud on the part of a mortgage professional which includes real estate appraisers, real estate accountants, real estate attorneys, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, mortgage underwriters, mortgage processors, mortgage settlement companies, mortgage title companies, mortgage loan originators, and any other provider of professional services engaged in the mortgage process. Criminal penalties include $5M and 35 years in jail.

So, if you cant afford the house you just bought (Obama would say, “if you were tricked into purchasing a house you can’t afford”), and the bank forecloses, all of the institutions and individuals involved in the transaction can expect a blizzard of nuisance suits accusing them of criminal acts as an affirmative defense; this presumably means that if the court finds fraud, the folks who cant pay get to keep the house. The promise of big money settlements will get ATLA to take all sorts of cases on spec, since in courts today there seems to be a 20 percent chance that anything can happen. But the Community Reinvestment Act and existing jurisprudence wont let the banks tighten up their lending standards very much

So, by pushing for ever more lenient lending practices, and making foreclosure extremely painful and risky for banks, Obamas leadership would have prevented the current crisis by making it wildly worse? Making it impossible for banks to operate at all?

Moderating the VP debate (for that matter, producing Washington Week) while having an economic stake in the outcome of the election creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. Obviously, if Obama wins, “Age of Obama” is set to be a big seller, and the timing of the release on Jan 20 clearly is intended to make the most of this. Safe to say a McCain swearing would depress her royalty payments a bunch.

The PBS Standards and Policies provide:

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J. Unprofessional ConductPBS expects producers to adhere to the highest professional standards. PBS may reject content if PBS has reason to believe that a producer has violated basic standards of professional conduct. Examples of unprofessional conduct by a producer include such things as plagiarism, fabrication, obtaining information by bribery or coercion, insensitivity to tragedy or grief, and real or perceived conflicts of interest such as accepting gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence the producer's work.